Shelly's Book Blog

Oliver Twist is one of many English classics that I have always been meaning to read. I bought myself a Nook for Christmas (Merry Christmas to me!), but I'm too cheap, so far, to pay for content for it. What better opportunity is there, then, to read classics such as Oliver Twist, which are available to download as ebooks for free? I went to the Project Gutenberg web site and dowloaded a copy of the ebook, and then transferred it to my Nook. This was all pretty easy, but I did need to email for help from Adobe when my Nook could not read the file I had transferred. Turns out I had to use the Adobe Digital Editions software to complete the transfer (thus enabling the digital rights management, I presume), so I had to delete the file and start again. No worries, though, as it worked fine once I got this procedure figured out.

I love reading on the Nook! It's great to be able to change the font size to whatever is comfortable, and the Nook is light and easy to hold. Page turning is as easy as a light tap with my finger on the touch screen. I'm thinking of reading Wuthering Heights next.

Anyway, I really enjoyed Oliver Twist. I hadn't realized before, but much of it is really funny. The humor arises from Dickens' biting sarcasm when describing the dreadful treatment Oliver receives at the hands of such self-serving, hypocritical characters as Mrs. Mann and Mr. Bumble. Mrs. Mann is the woman in charge of caring for the orphans at the workhouse where Oliver lives when he is a child. Dickens writes of her:

"The elderly female was a woman of wisdom and experience; she knew what was good for children; and she had a very accurate perception of what was good for herself" (p. 6).

Dickens spares none of the adults in poor Oliver's young life: the members of the Board who were supposed to oversee Mrs. Mann's activities, as well as the Beadle, Mr. Bumble, are mercilessly skewered by Dickens' eloquent descriptions. Dickens write of the board:

"So they established the rule, that all poor people should have the alternative (for they would compel nobody, not they), of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it" (p. 12).

Also, even though I knew that Fagin and Sikes were villainous thieves, I never realized how horrifying it would be to read the passages in this book where Oliver is at their mercy. Oliver's goodness and purity contrast almost too starkly with these two men's total depravity. As I read, I thought that no human could possibly be that good or that evil. In the end, though, the extremes make the ending that much more satisfying. Evil gets its just punishment, and Good gets its just reward. The End!